This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

Heh….I hate to admit this, but as a fairly on-to-it web guy, I’ve yet to actually get into RSS . I guess I just like visiting each site, rather than reading a generic looking summary. I probably should, though—the less time I spend catching up on things, the better.

I’m constantly reminded of this every time a woman in my office states preference for email notices and their eyes glaze over when someone asks about RSS .

Even for the RSS -centric among us, it’s too easy to gloss over things as you try to wade your way through hundreds of posts. E-mail is pushier, saying “look at me now!”

Also, most e-mail clients have filtering options (of varying levels of sophistication) that let you automatically sort the gold from the dross. It makes it easier to prioritize your reading and give your focus to one thing at a time. Feed readers, not so much.

I suggest putting the RSS in Plain English Video in the next email newsletter.

You guys need to do an RSS explanation page similar to how you did the OpenID explanation page. There’s a shortage of clear, concise overviews for average people explaining the benefits of RSS in a straightforward fashion without jargon and technobabble causing peoples’ “eyes to glaze over”.

I’m with Justin Bell. I prefer the experience of going to each site (and muscle memory prevents me from changing!). The only RSS feeds I subscribe to are all from job and gig sites, including the ones hosted by 37s, of course.

I also prefer to visit a blog direclty.

Its hard to remember sufficiently often the world one lives in isn’t the one most others live in. I work as user advocate in a tech firm, and am surrounded by intelligent, good intentioned folks – but am sometimes stunned by how quickly they basically forget that our users don’t use tech like we do.

Ha ha! So my problem is that I don’t remember sufficiently often that the user centered world I live in is not one many others really share!

Don’t forget that there are many potential users out there without access even to email: http://38thsignal.blogspot.com/2007/07/reminder-about-power-going-door-to-door.html

Will you be sending it out through SneakerNet as well? Cause I like my news hand delivered; saves me time. Then while your hear I can say.. hey, great job. Get me a soda.

@ Dan, Justin, Josh -

Dudes, that’s why you have to get into Google Reader as your RSS client. It comes with a handy dandy “Next” bookmarklet that you drop on your bookmark bar. Click it and it takes you to the actual page of the next item in your RSS subscriptions, on the website itself. To me, it’s like turning the pages of a magazine.

I’m not such a huge Google lover, but it’s pretty much the best thing since sliced bread.

That’s how/why I’m reading this article right now!

I don’t use RSS at all – I have never understood the attraction. However, I just wanted to say that I noticed your TIME appearance in the Indonesian edition this month (though still in English) ... but it was different to the article on the TIME web site and in the Australian edition. The different article wasn’t necessarily bad, it just wasn’t good – they tried expanding the article to about 5000 words, and it was terribly repetitive.

interesting to see the responses here. Despite seeing the potential and existing value of RSS and having played with it, let me also state for the record that I too have yet to derive value from the protocol except in the most basic way on my personalized Google page, where it helps me waste time at work

I guess I’ve been known to decry the reactionary tendencies of “users”, but there it is… pot.kettle. Interestingly enough (I suppose) I do a lot less exploration than I used to on the web.

Realistically though, its not so much my own reactionary tendencies as it is just doing what my employer does for the sake of expediency

As an employee working for a company whose soul business is email, I can definitely back up your comment on email having “so much power.” We process billions of emails and I can’t even begin to tell you how much money is made through the power of an effective email campaign.

I am definitely not going near the RSS train. Too impersonal. I enjoy the visual stimulation of the different sites I visit.

That Google Reader thing sounds intriguing, though.

Many people like to knock email as an uncool communications tool. But email is still far more popular and effective than blogs for the mainstream population, but works in a very different way.

Here is an analysis I did of email vs. blogs: http://www.damniwish.com/2007/06/email-plus-blog.html

Here is some research on the popularity of email: http://www.damniwish.com/2007/06/the-rising-impo.html

Jim D, Have you tried Feeddemon? I think that’s the best RSS reader since…uh.. Feed Demon 1.0. :)

Tried Google reader and found it slow and cumbersome in comparison to the demon.

Oh and as far as email vs. rss. I don’t heavily promote my email newsletter, but there are more than double the subscribers to it than the RSS feed – which is actively promoted in several places on my blog.

I think the old reliable email is still kicking.

testing

ok it works….sorry

Test